Friday, August 19, 2011

Civilization World becomes boring towards later part of the game

After writing my last blog post about Civilization World, I had completed 2 CivWorld games, and is currently playing another 2. For one of the games, I had been one of the top 10 players.

Before I can come up with a strategy guide, I start to get dull with the game.

It is a big problem with the game design, that the game become dead slow towards the end.

One of the reason that the game gets dull is the lack of building type. Each attribute can be boost by some building - population by granary, production by lumber mill, stone masonary, iron smelt and factory, science by library and university, culture by theater and museum, wealth by bank and market. And that's all! In the original Civilization there are so many building with more effectiveness when you advance your science, like sewage system, stock market, coleseum, etc. and etc. and you can boost up your growth with all these new bulidings and science advancement. However in Civilization World there is no more new building after industrialization (factory is latest building you can get), and the boost is not effective even if you building another building of the same type. For instance, I had tried to build 4 granaries in a row, and found that population growth just increase to double.

So, with requirement to advance a technology increase exponentially at later part (something like 500,000 science to research communism, for example), while the science gain for each harvest is around 80, it takes more than 1 week to research one technology at later era of the game. The case is similar if you want to win with culture or wealth victory.

Therefore it becomes dead boring once you get through after industrialization, and everyday there is not much advancement in the game.

And the game usually ends later than 3000 AD (my last game ends at 3160 AD), which is quite ridiculous to me.

What is an open world games? Wikipedia defines it as a type of videogame level design where the player can freely roam through the world and is given considerable freedom to interact with objectives and the like.I decided against including the likes of Deus Ex and the Thief series, which despite the freedom they offer to the player, are strictly linear titles—at least in terms of exploration.Rather, the showcase you see before you is a collection of the best open world experiences in which you, the player, can explore freely and to your heart's content while engaging in a myriad of activities unrelated to the "main story", if there is one.